Michael Dirda acquires many cultural brownie points for pointing people toward our favorite iconoclast Howard Waldrop in his Washington Postreview of the new Old Earth Books collectionTHINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: Selected Short Fiction, 1980 – 2005. He also mentions Howard Who?, signed copies of which are available etc. etc.

The books went shooting up the charts at Amazon.com (have there ever been 2 Waldrop collections in the top 1,000? Things Will Never Be… was at #330 recently and Howard Who? at 1,269. Excellent, excellent. Since Howard is a guy who literally lives off his writing and he mostly writes short fiction, we’ve got to find this man some readers.

Writers are invited to write up wondering pieces on Howard for all the writing mags and living sections of the weekend newspapers about: how to live on short story income; how to do research (when you don’t use Google); fishing; cartoons and how they show the nation’s true spirit.

To get the full effect, writers should interview Waldrop (by phone, letter, or in person—he really doesn’t do the email thing as such) and help the world discover him before he dies and it’s left to Library of America to collect all his books in one fat volume and give him the he’s a weird writer but he’s dead so it’s ok to read him stamp.

Updated: So close! Things Will Never Be… now at #314 recently and Howard Who? at 1,045. Have to run off so please keep an eye on them and tell us if they goes higher.

During a brief sidetrip to Texas (where a bunch of plausible fabulists were gathered and wondering where a certain Mr. B. Rosenbaum was {Swizzerland, it seems}), we asked a boon of Mr. Howard Waldrop. He consented (when approached with ice cream and beer: Texans!) to apply his signature to his book. Huzzah, we announced, to the surprised gila monsters everywhere. Huzzah.

Then we returned to Gueros again. For: verily, the tacos are unbeatable. Also, Las Manitas. Oh, the joy that was in our hearts, even as it was enspicened by the knowledge that we would have to leave this city of joyous eats and head away, away.

Even Joe’s Cafe was a place of wonders in this time of joy. (Joy especial as the fabulist gathering was on the edge of the City of Great Foods so to be in the center was akin to being the chocolaty center of a bon bon.) There, and a few other places, we were able to speak with Mr. N-B (interviewed here) whom, should you get the opportunity to see him read, you should take as he is, really, quite wonnerful.

Eventually retured to the Small Beer HQ and enstrengthened by our collection of Waldropian Signatures (for he is Mighty with his pen or typewriter), we are making these books, this debut collection, Howard Who? which is its name, available for sale.

Now your turn: Please send us Suggestions for what kind of sale we should put on this year. Suggestions welcome by email or in the comments below.

Other tiny updates: everywhere on our site. Because the paper in the office it overwhelming, of course.

Alan is reading at the Erie Bookstore on Dec. 30th at 2 PM. Drop by and see him!

Added links to a couple more audio recordings (almost like podcasts!) of Kelly (or readers reading Kelly’s stories) here — includes a Real Audio (oh well) file from November 2005 from Prairiie Lights where she read “Monster.”

Kelly also got a nice mention in this piece about short stories by Kevin Sampsell (micro emperor!).

Back in print after so many years, Howard Who? remains a terrific collection of short stories. There is nobody else alive writing stories as magnificently strange, deliriously inventive, and utterly wonderful as Howard Waldrop. More.

This won’t stay online, so here’s the full thing.

Nancy Pearl Books Reviews for 10/2/2006:

On the one hand, reading Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link’s exquisitely loopy collection of stories, demands a certain suspension of disbelief, not unlike when you read Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, or the other magical realists. (As Shakespeare had Hamlet note, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”) You simply have to accept (at least for the length of the story) that there might be zombies living among us, or that a purse can expand to hold a complete village. On the other hand, Link’s writing is so remarkable, her use of language so mind-boggling perfect, that you’re sucked into the world of the stories before you know it, beguiled by descriptions like this one, of a sofa covered in “…an orange-juice-colored corduroy that makes it appear as if the couch has just escaped from a maximum security prison for criminally insane furniture.” My favorite is the title story, which reminds me of a drawing by M.C. Escher’s picture The Drawing Hands. It’s intricate, wildly imaginative, and totally wonderful. Whether or not you think you like fantasy, if you’re a fan of inventive plots and good writing – Link’s use of language will fill you with awe and joy – don’t miss this collection.

Books. That thing above is the real and actual Howard Who? cover. More stuff was added to the page. A crap condition hardcover of this can be got for almost the same price as our upcoming pb, but you wouldn’t get Kevin Huizenga’s Ugly Chicken drawing! On Bookfinder, ABE, etc., it runs about $40 for a nice non-library copy, and Elliott Bay, B. Brown, and more have it up around $125 for a fine/fine signed HC. Howard will be at World Fantasy Con in Austin, TX, in November, and you can get him to sign your copy there.

This book should shoot out once word gets around. It’s 20 years old but this is alt. hist. fic. so the stories aren’t dated, if anything they’re just more heartbreaking, more harsh. Was “Horror, We Got” really published? Damn. Should send it out to blowhards and talking heads and step back and watch them get all head-explodey.

– In picture books, you gots to read MOME. The Spring/Summer ish is “Designed by acclaimed designer and cartoonist Jordan Crane” and “spotlight[s] a regular cast of a dozen of today’s most exciting cartoonist.” ‘Tis true. Wacky, deep, odd, not your average kitchen sink-is-clogged-what-should-I-do lit comics antho.

Books. That thing above is the real and actual Howard Who? cover. More stuff was added to the page. A crap condition hardcover of this can be got for almost the same price as our upcoming pb, but you wouldn’t get Kevin Huizenga’s Ugly Chicken drawing! On Bookfinder, ABE, etc., it runs about $40 for a nice non-library copy, and Elliott Bay, B. Brown, and more have it up around $125 for a fine/fine signed HC. Howard will be at World Fantasy Con in Austin, TX, in November, and you can get him to sign your copy there.

This book should shoot out once word gets around. It’s 20 years old but this is alt. hist. fic. so the stories aren’t dated, if anything they’re just more heartbreaking, more harsh. Was “Horror, We Got” really published? Damn. Should send it out to blowhards and talking heads and step back and watch them get all head-explodey.

– In picture books, you gots to read MOME. The Spring/Summer ish is “Designed by acclaimed designer and cartoonist Jordan Crane” and “spotlight[s] a regular cast of a dozen of today’s most exciting cartoonist.” ‘Tis true. Wacky, deep, odd, not your average kitchen sink-is-clogged-what-should-I-do lit comics antho.

AWP, Austin, Texas: Well, you had to be there. Wait, too annoying? Ok. It was a blast. We will probably go back to AWP next year in Atlanta, Georgia. If you want to put together a panel, email us. The proposals have to be in by May 1.

Food in Austin is fan-foodie-tastic. Breakfasts at the must-go-back-to Las Manitas Avenue Cafe — where some newspaper piece warned of the possibility of running into Karl Rove. And me not exercising my right to bear arms (very necessary if any Friend of Cheney is around). Was that tipping the free speech card a little early? Back to food. Manuel’s has great margaritas (and wandering Iowa poets) which made waiting around survivable then the little bit fancy good Mexican food (and actually spicy salsa) was verrry welcome.

Reading at Book People seemed to go well — 6 readers and it didn’t run over long. Phew. Book People started off as “Grok Books” — how funny is that? Huge store, tons of great books, so much space for all the good books (and huge shelves of staff picks) that they have tons of, uh, junk? Or sidelines, you pick. Being we were overstuffed with books and lit mags and so on, we bought books, cards and a Keep Austin Weird T-shirt — which kind of campaign you might want to get behind if you likes your local town stuff before it all becomes McWal-Margeted. The reading was put together by Omnidawn, who successfully launched their new short fiction anthology Paraspheres. [Between that and the upcoming Firebirds Rising anthology that’s the start of a pretty good year for spec. fic. short stories.] Tons of new fiction and some fave stories from Kim Stanley Robinson and Alasdair Gray.

Did it suck that SXSW was starting as we were leaving? Yes. But we wouldn’t have had a place to stay or tix to see anything. Before we left we had breakfast with Howard Waldrop and Martha Grenon at Guero’s (another great breakfast, oy!). Will need to add her site which has many excellent pix from Kosovo and Albania. In the meantime there’s this book site.

Updates on where you can meet, greet, and buy Howard Waldrop a beer this year. The man says these are the only places he’s going this year. (We had it wrong before, sorry.) Our Peapod edition of Howard Who? won’t be out until the second of these convention things:

Note that two of these conventions are in Austin (look out for a reading there, too). Howard is an iconoclast who has always lived only on his income from his fiction. And, for the most part, he’s a short story writer. As you can imagine, his travel budget isn’t great. Buy that man a beer, make him write some more.